August 20, 2016

35 comments:

I came across a baby skunk on a bike trail once. I stopped six or eight feet from him and he "charged" me. I backed up and after a few seconds he appeared satisfied I'd been sufficiently intimidated and he trundled off into the tall grass. Cute!

This family certainly appears to be goal-oriented. They jog down the lane, stop for a moment to check out the bicyclist, then take off again at a jog. What puts a skunk family in such a rush? Are they late for school?

Oh, jeez ... one of my border collies got skunked two days ago. She stinks, the whole house stinks ... like burning rubber and asparagus piss and cauliflower farts and the sulphers of Hell ... Illinois is infested with skunks, lately. You see whole families of them crossing the street of my neighborhood at night, mother and a line of little skunk-lets. Coyotes, get to work, do your job!

One of the pastors my church had when I was a child was also a good family friend. When their family went on vacation, they asked us to care for their pet skunk. Sure enough, they had a denatured skunk, which they brought to our house. It turns out skunks are very friendly and affectionate! And, as we can see here, curious!

Here, the problem for cyclists, as well as drivers, is what I call "pre-venisons". Many days I wonder about Darwin, when I see how the deer here react to humans. Or don't. I learned not to honk at them, because it is often counter-productive - often just melting down, instead of jumping one way or the other. The flip side of the problem of too many too tame deer is that the highway through town is a popular route through MT for bicyclists (and for 18 wheelers, which is why I would never bike there). The good and the bad is that you are more unlikely to kill the pre-venisons on a bike, but also less likely to have a firearm handy to put the injured ones out of their misery.

By pre-venisons do you mean baby deer? I wonder if they are tastier or more delicate, as veal is as compared to beef. But I suppose no one will ever know, as doubtless killing a baby deer buries you under the brig, both legally and socially.

TML: I was going to endorse rhhardin's suggestion, having used it on my own dogs with genuine, non-transitory success, AOT many commercial products -- just note that the hydrogen peroxide tends to have a slight greying/bleaching effect on black dogs. Still, preferable to the untreated alternative, trust me.

Lil' skunks are cute; baby skunks are extra cute (esp. those lil' noises they made while skunk-vestigating). The best part was watching them hustle off down the trail to get on with their skunk business.

But..."family?" I didn't see no skunk daddy, Professor. #SkunkDadsMatter

Speaking of skunks, Hillary Clinton flew 20 miles today on her private jet from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket. How much carbon did that put into the air? I guess we can add "climate criminal" to her lengthening rap sheet.

Marc Puckett said...Perhaps that was the papa skunk? #SkunksGenderRoleFluidityMatters

Marc, you think MALES take care of children? What about patriarchy, making women do all the work? What about women making 70% of what men make--you think skunks are immune from the harm of the (straight, white) patriarchy? Who's being naive now, Marc.

Now, if you said maybe that skunk is transexual, or identifies as a male skunk, you might have a point.

HoodlumDoodlum, An unsourced assertion at Wikipedia claims, "The male plays no part in raising the young"; of course that may just be someone being an over-zealous partisan of gender identity/GLBQXYZ politics. :-)